


goodbye my lullaby

by Hitsugi_Zirkus



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Anal Sex, Asphyxiation, Biting, Breathplay, Choking, Gratuitous Water Imagery, M/M, Tainted!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 10:06:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7043800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hitsugi_Zirkus/pseuds/Hitsugi_Zirkus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It only makes since to Mikleo that the reason he breathes is the one to also take it away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	goodbye my lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome to my second tainted!AU fic. This one is a lot more self-indulgent than the other one. I guess you could still consider it a bit introspective since it focuses more on Mikleo this time rather than Sorey like in my first tainted!AU fic. But this is mostly me being Gratuitous As Fuck (TM). Because. I couldn't stop thinking about Mikleo having an asphyxiation kink... And that, uh. Yeah.

He couldn’t breathe. 

All of his senses had flowed out, pooling around him. Although his eyes were closed, he could still make out the bare ribbons of light that penetrated through the depths of the water, brushing over the top of his head and over his bare skin.  Mikleo’s heart pounded in his ears, in time with the current trying to claim him. As he was pulled further under, he offered no resistance.

So that a tainted being could be purified, he had no right to touch the sun again. 

Mikleo had been told by Gramps before -- that his element of water was the easiest to become tainted. Water, like air and fire, had no distinct shape. Air could not be contained or held. Fire could be controlled but not forced into a form. 

Water, however -- water could be trapped. Water could overflow. Water could be stained. It was the element that could be held and cupped in ink-black hands, miasma spilling out into the deepest parts of the pool. 

Gramps had seen that flicker of fear in Mikleo’s eyes when he gave that warning ( _ if I’m not careful, I’ll only hold Sorey back when he goes into the human world _ ), and he said, “ _But_ , water is also the element of purification. It can wash away, cleanse, give life. If you ever feel yourself going astray, or uncertain of the path you need to follow, then seek solace in the water’s embrace.”

Mikleo was fairly certain that he was meant to float along the surfaces of the water, buoyed by a certain calm as he let the sun shed light on the darkest parts of himself. But instead he sank, he submerged himself under, deeper and deeper to where suns and stars couldn’t reach. 

Maybe he could survive being underwater. Being a water seraph, maybe there was even a way for him to not suffocate. But he held his breath, and if he opened his mouth, water would only flood down his throat and drown out his lungs. He’d lose his last breath in a burst of bubbles choking him to death. 

_ I can’t do this.  _ He writhed. _ I can’t do this -- Sorey is leaving -- he’s leaving -- I’m always left behind like this -- why can’t I follow -- where can I go -- I wish I was stronger -- wiser -- I want to be with Sorey -- always together -- I hate this -- I can’t do it -- _

It was getting darker, the edges of Mikleo’s world blurring together and closing in on his tiny form, threatening to swallow him whole and crush his bones in its abysmal throat. Something about being curled up under the tides gave him the impression of being something smaller and weaker, that needed the solace of these depths to protect him, like a child in the cradle of its mother's womb. He never had a mother; she’d been taken away from him, just like his human life, just like Sorey had almost been taken from him so many times, by the allure of the human world, by the duty of the Shepherd. 

In the drowsy blue, Mikleo recalled nights being cradled by this same darkness and starlight as Sorey slept beside him. Back then, everything was fine. Their lives were an undisturbed lake reflecting the light of the sun.

At some point, Mikleo stopped living on that surface, and started sinking. 

_ But I can be purified down here -- I’ve been feeling it, creeping -- inside me -- it keeps twisting -- I need to get rid of it -- I need to be purified -- sorry -- I'm so weak -- Sorey --  _

_ I didn’t want to be weak -- but I’m just -- water -- black water --  _

_ it hurts -- sorry -- I’m -- _

* * *

 

The only blue was of the sky above, getting darker with the passage of twilight. The blood-red of the setting sun canopied his vision as Mikleo broke through the surface of the water to swallow in the air at last.

Standing at the shore as a shadow, someone waited for him. 

Mikleo languidly made his way over like a leaf sailing over the water by the breeze. Mikleo’s every movement was a display of how he wore the water and controlled it: it parted seamlessly around him, and after a moment, the drops rolling down his white skin faded, his hair growing dry. Not a drop of water touched him even as he stood higher and higher above the water level. And the whole time, he didn’t take his eyes off his visitor, the one who had called out to him in the depths without parting his lips. 

Mikleo belonged wholly to this person alone. He saw no one else, and could hear no other voice. The hand that offered itself out to him was a familiar one, and he took it delicately, allowing himself to be pulled out from the water at last. 

Remembering how naked he was, he conjured up some clothes for himself, streams of blue and white wrapping themselves around his torso and legs and arms, fluid silk over his lithe body. His gaze met that of his dear childhood friend, his flockless Shepherd, his forever lover. 

“You caught me, Sorey.”

A smile that bordered on the suggestive quirked on Sorey’s lips, playing with the shadows of his face. “You didn’t have to go and do that,” he said, gesturing at the outfit Mikleo had donned. His green eyes, tinged with needles of red, roamed over his body, as deliberately as his fingertips tracing over Mikleo’s skin. 

“The air makes me chilly,” he said dismissively. His shoulder bumped against Sorey’s chest, an attempt to work himself into Sorey’s embrace. 

On cue, Sorey laughed deep in this throat and wrapped his arms around Mikleo, and Mikleo hummed happily at nuzzling into the black cloth of Sorey’s cloak. The taint had altered a lot of things, his Shepherd’s outfit that Alisha had given him with such care not barred from that. Mikleo himself wore white now, perhaps in mockery of that same purity he once so desperately tried to reclaim, those days of washing himself in water again and again until he no longer cared if he resurfaced from the pools or not. 

One person had cared though, and he ended up getting caught under Mikleo’s black tides. 

“You’re thinking of unnecessary things again, aren’t you?” Sorey’s voice rumbled in his chest, a pleasant sound to Mikleo’s ear, even when his words were laced with dripping shadow-ink. 

(Sorey used to have sunrays on his lips and wildflowers in his eyes, smelling of summer and holding Mikleo like starry nights, the same one they had stood under when Sorey had told him that soon, they’d be apart for centuries, if not forever if they were killed. But ever since Mikleo forced him to become tainted, Sorey’s face was shadowed with heavy storm clouds, blood soaking his breaths, and his voice was heavy ripples in Mikleo’s heart even when he didn’t speak a word aloud.)

Mikleo huffed through his nose, burying himself more in Sorey’s shoulder. Being bonded through malevolence was a new depth of connection Mikleo had yet to feel with Sorey, even when they had armatized. Sorey could read him better than before, as if his thoughts were etched on his skin, a book that Sorey could read and analyze like his beloved Celestial Record. Mikleo wondered what was written on him now. He wondered if Sorey could physically carve out new words instead, and help him overwrite everything weak about himself.

“Wanting to stay with you is unnecessary?” he said, half in retort, half in need of reassurance. Sometimes he craved it so deeply.

As always, Sorey was ready to give it to him. “Not at all. It’s all I ever think about too,” he murmured into Mikleo’s ear. Then, as the earth caught the rain, Sorey met Mikleo’s lips in a solid caress. 

(“Bond” and “promise” were good words, the very veins that kept their friendship alive, that whispered eternity, one of the many temptations that had drawn the malevolence into Mikleo’s heart. From there, all his selfish wishes had been born. “Sorey” carved a million times over his chest and along his spine. The heaviest word so seductive on his tongue, boiling in his blood when he was held and penetrated deep inside by his flockless Shepherd -- “love”.)

_ Always together -- your sinew wrapped in me -- as one -- closer and closer until I can’t breathe in anything but you -- _

_ If I could, I would want to suffocate in you -- _

_ I would want -- to -- _

* * *

Strangled noises pulled from his throat, summoned forth by the heartbeat pounding against his windpipe, from Sorey’s hot palms.

Red-needled eyes narrowed at him, glazed over in desire and possession. “I’ve been wondering,” Sorey said. His free hand cradled Mikleo’s flushed cheek, his thumb running along the bone to wipe away the overstimulated tears falling from his eye. 

Mikleo’s lungs quivered, stunted breaths escaping his lips. 

A seraph-turned-dragon would wear scales, rough to the touch, but Mikleo’s scales cut all who touched him, a spider’s web of cracked glass covering his skin. Mikleo could hear that glass crack and break when Sorey’s fingers closed ever tighter around his throat. 

“I’ve been wondering,” Sorey began again, “why is it that you like this so much? What about it do you enjoy?” His voice indicated that he wasn’t disturbed that they had come to this position again -- Mikleo splayed on the mattress, sweat making his skin shimmer, Sorey straddling him, one hand clenched around his throat, the other roaming to stroke his face, his naked chest, his hips grinding down to feel the hardness between Mikleo’s legs. 

(“Kiss me, Sorey,” Mikleo would say, “hold me, fuck me, bite me, eat me,  _ suffocate me _ .” His body was a wilted thorn-infested bouquet of bruises and bites, blood and scratches, some so deep to stain the sheets and for Sorey to murmur in pure ecstasy how _delicious_ Mikleo tasted.)

He couldn’t say what it was he loved about it. His throat was sore afterward and he couldn’t talk. His Adam’s apple pressed painfully against the back of his throat. 

_ I can’t breathe _ . He only saw Sorey, that adoring gaze, full of love and possession flooding between Mikleo’s lips.  _ Only Sorey _ , in his eyes and denying his lungs life, all of him held in the power of Sorey’s grip, giving him a peek of the black death that laid at the bottom of the ocean. 

Sorey relaxed his grip, rubbing along Mikleo’s throat with soothing movements. Kisses were pressed along his jaw, over his lips, swallowing those first gasps of air before they could escape. Light-headed, Mikleo lazily glided his tongue over Sorey’s and inside his mouth. He squirmed, trying to gain friction to make up for the forceful touch that had been removed from his neck.

_ Don’t stop, keep stealing every last bit of me _ , were his feverish thoughts, and he had no idea if they were born from the hot haze of pleasure or something else deeper and darker inside him. Maybe it was both. The delirium of unbridled pleasure between two bodies had a way to intertwine multiple thoughts in his head, and Mikleo read it all as fulfillment of heart and body.  

Mikleo’s hands continued to rest weakly against the sheets when Sorey moved to pull off their pants. He spread his legs, eager and wanting, a tortured moan reverberating in the dark room when Sorey pushed first his fingers then the hard length of his cock inside. Mikleo’s walls ached on the edge of pleasure-pain, his hands finally coming up to grab over the muscles of Sorey’s back. He was so  _ full  _ of Sorey, overflowing with him, Mikleo’s desire dripping from the head of his aching cock, the corners of his eyes, shimmering on his lips as moan after moan heated the room. Sorey pushed his hips hard between Mikleo’s thighs, broken whispers of his name damp on his surely bruised neck. 

Speaking of which, Sorey’s hand had returned to encircle it -- his fingers still relaxed when Sorey’s tongue ran along the ridge of his collarbone before his teeth sank into the soft skin. Mikleo felt the puncture into his flesh, the heat of pain and blood that accompanied the bite, and all his breath left him from his hitched, delighted gasp. At that moment, Sorey tightened his hand around Mikleo’s throat again and he could barely suck in a wisp of breath before it was stolen once more. 

The pressure flowed right to his cock twitching against his navel. Mikleo’s eyelashes fluttered, small sighs escaping, his hips undulating against Sorey’s as best as he could.

Before the black and the twists and the cracked glass, Mikleo might’ve thought this hand and his thoughts as a punishment -- for wanting too much, for wishing more than anything to remain by Sorey’s side, more than his desire to save Glenwood. How they were now was the result of those tainted threads that had tangled around his heart, threads his own head had spun. 

When Sorey tried to sneak out of Elysia without him-- 

“A-ah… S-So… Ha-aah--”

When Sorey had tried to take on the burdens of the Shepherd without him-- 

“You’re so beautiful, Mikleo…” 

When Sorey had turned to him and said he would be Maotelus’ vessel, closing off all his senses, unable to see or hear or feel Mikleo anymore, unable to hold him or talk to him for centuries, perhaps never again--

“Ah-ah-ah-- Hnn-- khh--”  _ Don’t leave! _ “Khh, nnn-- So-rey--!”  _ Don’t leave, there’s not supposed to be separation between us, don’t, Sorey--! _

“Hey,” Sorey’s voice was at his ear, hot and thick with pleasure and Mikleo could hear nothing else but the rise and fall of that voice. All at once, his thoughts were silence, his insides purred in peace, his body arched up. 

“Sorey,” he muttered in his clenched throat.

“It’s me, Mikleo, that’s right. I’m here. I’m never leaving.” Sorey’s thrusts picked up, and Mikleo let out strangled cries from his insides being rubbed against so sweetly. “Wherever I go,” Sorey said between moans, “you’re coming with me. I’m here with you, Mikleo. You won’t sink below those waters alone.” 

Too much. It was too much. Mikleo was utterly enamored with those promises, the words he’d always wanted to hear, now they dripped down his crushing throat like honey. Sorey was touching him everywhere, inside and out, with words and gazes and hands and blood.

It was a proof of bond Mikleo had always wanted with Sorey. 

Whether or not that forced Sorey to drown with him, Mikleo found guilt didn’t well in him like it had before the taint. And after he came with a hoarse cry and he felt Sorey’s cum hot inside him, Mikleo found he embraced that satisfying feeling of having _stolen Sorey from everything_ _that threatened to take him away_ , just the same as Sorey stole his breath.

Sorey kissed him all over with blood-shimmered lips, peppered the tender flesh of Mikleo’s neck with them over and over until Mikleo was convinced it must look like he was wearing a choker of red roses. Mikleo smiled, petting through Sorey’s hair.

When his vision was no longer blurry, Mikleo gazed at their walls, painted dark silver-blue from the moonlight streaming in the room, feeling as if he were cradling Sorey at the bottom of the ocean.

**Author's Note:**

> Upon finishing this, I realized my first smutty soymilk was this, a tainted!au... Pure soymilks would probs have really vanilla sex -- or at the very least there'd be no choking ahha aha ah,,ha.... I'm pretty happy with this though, I haven't been able to stop thinking of asphyxiation lately, so I threw Mikleo under the bus to fulfill my need. I hope y'all enjoyed it too. Sorey of course does this because Mikleo asks him to. 
> 
> (Also general PSA that if you're gonna engage in breathplay, do your safety research. Although it was consensual, Sorey's method of choking should not be copied ofc. Come on, its fanfiction of mentally unbalanced boys. I would mention if this was proper play.)
> 
> Twitter, @fuwajellyfish  
> Tumblr, clears-jellyfish-dress


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